CALL FOR TAKE UP Automating Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-channel Distribution www.AXMEDIS.org

Announcement of a competitive call for additional project partners

The following project currently active in the Sixth Framework programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities contributing to the creation of the European research area and to innovation (2002-2006) requires the participation of new project partners to carry out certain tasks within the project.

Project contract number: 511299
Project acronym: AXMEDIS
Project full name: Automating Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-channel Distribution
Instrument type: Integrated project

The AXMEDIS integrated project is to create the AXMEDIS framework to meet major challenges and needs of the digital-content market. Currently, the digital-content market is urging better pricing and value-for-money for industry products and services. The containment of sale prices is a vital key when setting up a sustainable business venture in the digital cross media content. AXMEDIS solutions will enable the production processes to be faster and cheaper, providing at the same time new capabilities to support safer distribution and multi-channel interoperability.

AXMEDIS aims to meet the challenges of market demand by: (i) reducing costs for content production and management by applying composition, parallel processing, optimisation techniques for content formatting and representation (format) and workflow control; (ii) reducing distribution and aggregation costs in order to increase accessibility with a Peer-to-Peer platform at Business-to-Business level, which can integrate content management systems and workflows; (iii) providing new methods and tools for innovative, flexible and interoperable Digital Rights Management (DRM), including the exploitation of MPEG-21 and overcoming its limitations, and supporting different business and transactions models.

AXMEDIS realises a set of tools and solutions to be used as components to set up and renovate processes and factories, organised by the leading distributor AXMEDIS existing partners. AXMEDIS demonstrators are to focus upon tools for: (i) content production and B2B distribution; (ii) content production and distribution to end-users via different channels including satellite data broadcast, interactive TV (i-TV), personal computer (PC), kiosks, mobile, PDA and others.

Additional demonstrators will be the associated sub-projects launched as take up actions to be selected with this competitive call. This call is addressed to organisations interested in developing real solutions by exploiting AXMEDIS technologies: one of its key objectives is the adoption of the AXMEDIS framework and technology in real-life scenarios. Proposers are required to show that their core activities are already facing the issues related to cross media content production and/or distribution while proposals should highlight how the current quality, efficiency and effectiveness of their activities could be substantially enhanced by the adoption of the AXMEDIS technology.

The selected sub-projects will join the AXMEDIS project to:

• enhance the applications areas and/or functionalities of the AXMEDIS framework; Information regarding the AXMEDIS framework can be obtained from the web portal of AXMEDIS: http://www.axmedis.org/area_4/doc.php
• allow the integration and/or the exploitation of the AXMEDIS framework in the value chain of different object types;
• exploit and extend the AXMEDIS framework in supporting additional processes and/or players or new distribution channels not covered by the AXMEDIS project (see above).

AXMEDIS tutorial notes can be recovered from this link: or an on line version can be accessed from the AXMEDIS portal page

The candidate topic areas of this call include the followings application and/or extension of the AXMEDIS framework and tools to support:

• one or more distribution channels such as mobile distribution, IPTV, DVB-S, DTT, DVB-T, DVB-H, and DTV, with smart cards, etc., in order to make evident interoperability of content and tools with other AXMEDIS distribution channels and tools (mobile devices, PC, STB, portable video player, portable music player, etc.); mobile distribution is one of the interested topics even if this channel is already addressed in AXMEDIS;
• massive and/or coordinated production, aggregation, protection, of cross media content; collaboration among different actors of the production and distribution value chain; collaborations among cultural institutions, etc.; video and music based solutions are interested even if those content types are already addressed in AXMEDIS;
• production and/or distribution authoring tools and/or players in relationships of content types not presently covered by AXMEDIS such as MHP, e-government content, health care content.

Proposal shall cover at least one of these topic area and the presence of a mobile distributor will be appreciated.

AXMEDIS consortium will support the new partners of the take-up actions with dedicated technical and training activities on AXMEDIS and with related technologies.

Proposals assessment will be based on (i) S&T excellence, (ii) quality of the consortium and (iii) mobilisation of resources.

Expected duration of participation in project: from 09/2006 to 02/2008 (indicative dates)

Estimated costs and funding for the tasks (indicative) a maximum of 1 to 1.1 meuro

Call identifier: FP6-2006-IST-AXMEDIS .

• Full text of the call (17-January-2005) .

Language in which proposal should be submitted: English

Submission mechanism: is paper only, the electronic submission is not allowed.

• PDF version of guidelines for the submission including forms (17-January-2005) .
• RTF version of guidelines for the submission including editable forms (17-January-2005) .
• for general information on IST programme please refer to http://www.cordis.lu/

Date of close of call: Wednesday, 19th April 2006. 

Time of close of call: 17h00 Florence/Italy time

Address at which the proposals have to be delivered:

Prof. Paolo Nesi
Department of Systems and Informatics
Distributed Systems and Internet Technology Lab
University of Florence
Via S. Marta 3
50139 Firenze
ITALY

Web address for further information (call webpage) - http://www.axmedis.org/callfortakeup/call.html

Email address for further information (Project coordinator): Paolo Nesi, nesi@dsi.unifi.it